The Future of Food

I n the 1980s, the precautionary principle migrated from its European roots to the international environmental scene. By 1992, it was ubiquitous: it appeared in the Rio Declaration, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). These precedents ultimately spawned the CBD’s January 2000 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which uses the principle as a basis for assessing the risk of international transfer, handling, and use of genetically modified organisms. This protocol is considered a major victory for the precautionary principle and its advocates. A popular formulation of the precautionary principle is the Wingspread Declaration: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not established scientifically.” This principle has been interpreted by many to require—as precautionary measures—policies to curb technologies that science cannot prove to be absolutely safe. Specifically, it has been invoked to justify a ban on research, development, and deployment of genetically modified (GM) crops. This application of the precautionary principle acknowledges the public health and environmental risks that a ban might reduce but ignores other risks that a ban might generate or prolong. Therefore, while the operation might be successful, the patient might die. Moreover, the principle provides no guidance in situations where actions such as a ban on GM crops could simultaneously generate uncertain benefits and uncertain harms. To avoid counterproductive “precautionary” policies, I propose a framework for applying the precautionary principle. This new approach provides a way to evaluate policies that might result in ambiguous outcomes because the harms might offset, in whole or in part, the benefits of GM crops. Using this framework, the precautionary principle can be used to answer a variety of difficult questions in the debate over GM crops. For example, do the public health and environmental benefits of GM crops exceed their harms? Considering the wide range of consequences of banning such crops, would the precautionary principle, in fact, justify such a ban? Finally, would a ban be consistent with the stated aims and objectives of the CBD and the Biosafety Protocol?2